The photos are typical of Juergen's style. But his style has been evolving more into casual snapshot aesthetic, but in more ironic way.
High fashion is always copying what the regular unfashionable people on the street are wearing, in the eternal search for authenticity.
Which is why things like bubble jackets, sweat pants, crocs and dad sneakers evolved from being laughed at to being very fashionable.
That's kind of what fashionable means.
Oxford dict:
Fashionable - characteristic of, influenced by, or representing a current popular style
I kinda like this Cambridges definition[1] of fashionable more (even if isn't perfect)
> wearing clothes, doing things, and going to places that are considered stylish
There is clear difference of what is considered stylish and what is popular.
Macmillian[2] has even more poignant definition available:
> popular with rich and successful people, and often expensive
Which I might disagree on specifics, but it still carries the thought over. Fashionable is not (necessarily, or even commonly) popular with the common people, but of some sort of elite.
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fashiona...
[2] https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/fashi...
A lot of what is "popular" is still recognized by the wearer themselves as not fashionable, and is worn despite that (and sometimes because of that) for various reasons.
P.S. class aside, nylon is a bad choice to wear on an airplane. It melts into your skin. Cotton and leather are good choices if you want to survive an accident. Also decent lace up shoes can save your life if you need to exit a burning airplane. Try running over burning wreckage with flip-flops.
I take off my shoes for comfort when at altitude, but lace them up for takeoff and landing.
Other than that, this looks like someone with a smartphone trying a little too hard to "do photography" yet not bothering to travel to a nicer venue.
To check out a good example for a movie, watch The Frighteners of doing traditional close ups with wide angles. This allows for normal framing of your talent while giving lots of room in the frame for the background gags.
In terms of which focal lengths produce perspectives that make the most sense to our eyes, people usually point towards 35-50mm lenses. Supposedly the formula is something like "focal length = diagonal measurement of the format".
Look through a "normal" lens (~42mm equiv) and you'll realize that it's actually nowhere near our field of vision (FOV), peripheral included. What a normal lens does is take a very narrow slice of our FOV and represent it neatly and proportionally, i.e. given two similarly framed portraits, a 40mm would make your nose look "normal" whereas a 28mm would make it look larger [1]. The shorter focal length dramatizes while also being closer to what we actually see; this wide perspective is why the two most venerable "street" cameras, the Ricoh GR and Leica Q, have fixed 28mm lenses.
[1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/1/17059566/pla...
However, these lenses will obviously not produce a human field of view. In fact, AFAIK, you cannot reproduce the field of view of a human eye without pretty severe distortions. Your eyes aren't rectilinear, so using very short rectilinear lenses don't really get you any closer to how a human sees. This choice is therefor aesthetic.
Shooting wide-angle in color is aesthetically and objectively closer to what we (typically) see than a black-and-white telephoto picture.
I agree about color, but not focal length. Using very short focal lengths introduces highly distracting distortions. "Normal" focal lengths (35-50mm) are closer to what we experience, despite not having the wide field of view.
In order for such short focal lengths to truly be representative of human vision, you'd have to abandon rectilinear optics and flat media; and you'd have to graduate the level of detail such that most of the resolution was concentrated in the center rather than the periphery. If you're not willing to do so, a "normal" focal length reproducing the central vision will always be truer to human vision due to having a more reasonable perspective.
Our attention and peripheral vision come into play also in how we consume a photograph. You will employ your peripheral vision less when you view images on your phone compared to a wall-sized print. Additionally, the longer the focal length, the more prescriptive the effect; the photographer and photograph are telling you what to look at. Wide lenses invite the photographer to work with juxtaposition and layering, and the viewer to selectively attend to different elements, which is actually in agreement with your closer-to-experience angle, i.e. the viewer must decide where to focus their cone of attention in a wide-angle photograph, just like they would in real life.
Again, I am not dealing with an absolute capital-T True representation of human vision. We are constrained to modern optical formulae and 2D mediums of commercially available photographic equipment. You could snowball this all the way into stereoscopic 3D fisheye videos livestreamed from eyewear, to get even closer to True human vision.
I still maintain that wide lenses are so useful and popular for documentary and snapshot purposes because they record more of the elements we once and will attend to; a more convincing simulacrum. It's no coincidence that 35mm and 28mm and wider are used by so many photojournalists and street/documentary photographers, often exclusively in the latter case.
[1] https://petapixel.com/2016/08/01/laowa-12mm-f2-8-widest-f2-8...
[2] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1089935-REG/rokinon_1...
If you're using flat media and rectilinear optics, shorter lenses get progressively less and less representative of human vision.
> the photographer and photograph are telling you what to look at.
This is always true at every focal length. Your choice of composition informs the viewer whether it's a wide angle shot or super-telephoto.
> ...wide lenses are so useful and popular for documentary and snapshot purposes because they record more of the elements...
Shorter lenses do incorporate more into the image. That doesn't make them more or less representative of human vision.
Below ~12mm, yes. 28mm is still a compromise between field of view and usability; even with a 21mm, I have to be right in front of someone for them to fill the frame, because I would have to do the same if I were looking at them with my own eyes.
> This is always true at every focal length. Your choice of composition informs the viewer whether it's a wide angle shot or super-telephoto.
"Lately I’ve been struck with how I really love what you can’t see in a photograph." - Diane Arbus.
Photography, with its receptiveness to stream-of-conscious approach and synchronous rearing with postmodernism, is an inherently subjective medium. Joel Meyerowitz, on his use of wide angle lenses, terms the explicit look-at-this approach as 'collecting' [1]. There are subgenres dedicated to not collecting, introducing ambiguity that invites the viewer to form their own interpretation of the recorded reality.
I took a walk this afternoon and looked at a tree ~5m away. I could visualize framing the trunk of the tree with a 50 or 75mm, but also noticed a child running towards the tree. The childless telephoto perspective would've been a more accurate representation of my subjective experience of focusing on the tree, but an objectively less accurate representation of what I was actually seeing in my field of vision. A tree-only photo tells you to look at the tree, whereas a wider perspective invites you to consider the relationship between the disparate elements. Meyerowitz also waxes poetically about this [ibid].
Again, the Ricoh GR and Leica Q, the most popular dedicated street/documentary cameras, have 28mm lenses, and the Fujifilm X100 a 35mm. Essentially all of the street photographers I've met internationally use either a 28mm or 35mm most of the time. There is a visceral you-are-right-there-in-the-moment feeling from looking at a wide angle photograph, especially when printed large, that simply cannot be reproduced with a normal-telephoto.
Which is what I'm saying. It's a compromise, rather than trying to match human vision.
> "Lately I’ve been struck with how I really love what you can’t see in a photograph." - Diane Arbus.
There is no focal length that doesn't involve a choice about what the viewer can see.
There's always composition. You're always making a choice.
Once you get to a certain level, you can begin to make choices that invites the viewer to make a choice, and realize that your choices are only ever second to theirs. Wider lenses are more effective at this specifically because they gather more elements in the frame, inducing more ambiguity and opportunity for alternative interpretations, just like how we always have to decide where our cone of attention points.
Stopping short of advising you to touch grass, I'd invite you to shoot exclusively with wides and fisheyes for a while, and practice soft focus for peripheral awareness [1]. Apart from that, no argumentation on photography through the limited medium of text is going to reconcile our perspectives.
[1] https://www.victoriastellatoskeet.com/blog/at-home-eye-exerc...
Subjects regularly look much further from the camera than they actually are. Objects at the edge of the frame are weirdly stretched. Whatever is closest to the camera will appear disproportionately large in your final image. Objects in the background are disproportionately small.
Not to mention barrel distortions tend to be much more prominent as focal length is shortened.
Normal focal lengths are the closest to human vision. Wide angle fisheye lenses could be ok with curved media, but otherwise they're just warped.
Considering the area of focus of human vision, along with the fact that we don't see in rectilinear terms, trying to reduce all the aspects of human vision to one factor: field of view... seems foolish at best.
If we viewed photos in some kind of spherical VR space or on curved media, then wider field of view with a fisheye lens could be argued to be more similar to human vision. However, we almost exclusively view pictures as flat sheets of paper or flat rectangular screens.
For those reasons and others, 35-50mm is far more similar to actual human vision.
https://petapixel.com/2012/11/17/the-camera-versus-the-human...
Composition (and thus the number of elements in frame) is a choice that gets made by the photographer, and can be achieved by altering the scene, changing distance, or changing focal length. Having more or fewer elements in frame has nothing to do with mimicking human vision, and whatever focal length you've chosen is a decision you're making for the viewer. If you make a 360° photo, that's still a composition decision you're making on behalf of the viewer, and it directly effects how they consume your work.
Now, if you want your image to be a wider angle, that's fine. That is a legitimate compositional choice... but it is a choice that you the photographer are making. It's not better or worse. Nor is trying to be "closer to human vision" inherently better or worse than any other choice. Knock yourself out with whatever focal lengths suit you.
If you can cherrypick to distortion, I can cherry pick to compositional element-gathering ability, of which a wide field of view is objectively better at, and which is actually more important to documentation-oriented photographers. To revisit the impetus for this conversation:
>Some photographers feel the shorter focal lengths feel "more authentic" somehow.
>Considering the area of focus of human vision, along with the fact that we don't see in rectilinear terms, trying to reduce all the aspects of human vision to one factor: field of view... seems foolish at best.
The wideness is precisely why practiced documentary photographers/photojournalists choose 28-35mm for their more authentic representation; it is a better representation of the messiness of the world that takes a trained eye to organize. Empirically and experientially, experienced portrait photographers will use normals and telephotos for pleasing-yet-detached proportions, and experienced street/snapshot photographers will continue using wides for the authentic drop-the-viewer-in-the-world effect. To say that they should actually be using 50mm is... foolish at best. When someone pays me for portraits, I will use a 50-75mm, but when I want to remember what it was like to be somewhere doing something and living, I and many others will use a 28mm or 35mm.
I will now go photograph grass with a 28mm and you should too.
I'm cherrypicking to perspective. Distortion is an additional argument, alongside field of view of the area of focus, etc.
> documentary photographers/photojournalists choose 28-35mm for their more authentic representation
I dispute the idea that there is anything like a uniformity of choices, and I dispute the idea that documentary photographers choose a focal length for authenticity purposes. If you're doing a documentary and especially if you're doing photojournalism, you're choosing focal lengths that properly frame your subject at whatever distance you need to stand at... because often you won't be able to choose your distance to the subject.
This fstoppers article suggests that the two most useful photojournalism lenses are a 24-70mm zoom, and an 85mm portrait lens.
https://fstoppers.com/originals/two-most-useful-lenses-photo...
Other articles seem to suggest that photojournalists should carry zoom lenses covering a range from 12 or 16mm to 200mm, which makes perfect sense.
I see no indication that 28-35mm is preferred.
> To say that they should actually be using 50mm is... foolish at best.
Then don't say that. What does this statement have to do with this conversation?
> When someone pays me for portraits, I will use a 50-75mm, but when I want to remember what it was like to be somewhere doing something and living, I and many others will use a 28mm or 35mm.
And that's fine. You can use whatever focal lengths you want to evoke different emotions. That's one of the reasons we don't just use one lens or one focal length all the time.
This isn't really relevant to the assertion that short focal lengths are somehow closer to human vision.
Documentation: the act or an instance of furnishing or authenticating with documents [Merriam-Webster]. Documentary photographers are thus by definition chiefly concerned with representing events as authentically as they happened.
I've done several years of work as a photojournalist [1-3]. Of the other photojournalists I've bumped into, the wide-normal zoom or a 24/28mm prime gets used most of the time. Barring logistical mandates, only amateurs aren't able to choose their distance to the subject and rely solely on telephotos; more experienced PJs know how to get close. “If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough” - Robert Capa.
I also do a lot of personal street/documentary work and have shot around prominent photo circles in Japan and New York [4,5]. As I've said repeatedly, the most popular cameras in this genre (Ricoh GR, Leica Q, Fuji X100) sport fixed, i.e. unchangeable, 28mm or 35mm lenses. Many of those who shoot on Leicas, whose system lenses are so expensive you can only have a few, often choose either a 28mm or 35mm. It's a running joke within New York specifically that you don't shoot street unless it's with a Leica M6 and 28mm.
> Then don't say that. What does this statement have to do with this conversation?
With regards to documentary photography, which is trying to portray things as authentically as they happen, by your standards, normal lenses would be the principle option because of the distortionless proportional perspective, but this is empirically not the case.
I think we're on different levels of experience here, and I will sign off this conversation as I advise again: go photograph grass with a 28mm.
[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/CHS-DHPHV8c/
[2] https://www.instagram.com/p/CHVdZ0SHuI2/
[3] https://www.instagram.com/p/CBBK85GnVPA/
Not relevant to the discussion.
> I've done several years of work as a photojournalist [1-3]
This is an anecdote, and even if accepted it doesn't do anything show uniformity.
You have chosen short focal lengths. That's fine.
> With regards to documentary photography, which is trying to portray things as authentically as they happen, by your standards, normal lenses would be the principle option because of the distortionless proportional perspective, but this is empirically not the case.
That is not my standard.
You're right, if you post these anonymously to IG, no one would bat an eye. But it's published in a prominent fashion magazine, it's taken by the famous Juregen Teller, it features celebrities posing in an unflattering way, they're wearing the latest designer clothes, and it got a ton of negative attention on Twitter and other social media (all attention is good attention).
A typical amateur won't be able to do that (they probably think they can). I consider his style to be real and "amateurish" in a deliberate way. In some ways, I feel he's parodying amateur photos and putting famous celebrities in situations that normal pros don't usually would or can. Here is another site that tries to describe it: https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/juergen-teller-w-magazine/
I'm also not one to critique photos from a technical perspective, and tend to go by feel in my own and others photos.
When I was more serious into photography back in the day, getting a photo that can express what I wanted it to feel or the story I wanted to convey was much harder.
The rich or famous can cosplay poverty, but the people in between can't, for fear of being mistaken as poor.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new-left/